Breaking down the big five barriers to communication in HE

(Or, in other words: How can your uni solve the five biggest problems that are most likely getting in the way of people connecting with your comms?)

HE Comms Land is not by any stretch of anyone’s imagination the same place it was 20 years ago.

Despite the revolution perhaps not unfolding at the pace many HE comms people might like, higher education has made notable jumps forward at communicating with its diverse audiences.

• University websites – while still vast and not-always-that-easy to navigate – aren’t quite the unwieldy beasts they once were
  
  

• Course pages (a particular area of specialism for us here at All Things Words) have come on in strides – with video and social proof now being included on many sites, and some unis even going as far as to include things like taster sessions and direct chat links with student ambassadors
  
  

• Research is being talked about more widely, and you can see lots of unis making solid headway in bringing complex subjects to life, and capturing the impact of the much-needed work that’s underway to address the world’s trickiest problems. 
  

But.

And there is a but.

There’s still a lot of not-so-great communication being used to promote courses and talk about research, too.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that the things I see unis often ‘getting wrong’ from a writing perspective are still largely the same today as they were in 1999, when I penned my first brochure for our local university’s business school.

Depressing? Perhaps.

But there is a glimmer of good news in this situation, too.

Which is that once you know what those common pitfalls or problems are, you’ll be able to spot them far more easily – and give them a wide berth.

And this blog post is going to help you do exactly that.

So let’s get those big five mistakes out on the table, shall we? And look at how you can avoid and fix them in your copy, so that more people want to read, and act, on the comms your institution and teams are putting out into the world.

Because we want more people to connect with higher education, and it’s your job – and mine – as HE communicators to write stuff that makes that as likely as possible.

So let’s dive in…

HE comms problem number 1: Too much ‘we-ing’

This feels like a good place to start.

Because, in my ‘humble been-around the-HE-copywriting-block’ opinion, this two-letter word is currently one of the biggest culprits that’s getting in the way of people understanding the value of going to university.

• We believe in creating a quality student experience
• We’re committed to innovation in everything we do
• We pride ourselves on our world leading research
  
  

What do those three lines have in common?

Apart from being faaaaar too wishy washy to tell you anything of value (we’ll come onto that in sec), they all start with w…w…we.

And too much ‘we’ (when it comes to copy on your website, course descriptions or anywhere else that’s meant to incite emotion or action) is rarely a good move.

Because – lest we forget – our time-poor, information-overloaded readers don’t care that much about ‘we’ (ie. you). They care about themselves (and how your university can benefit them, and their lives and careers).

We isn’t going to catch people’s attention.
We isn’t going to help them choose your uni over another one.
We isn’t going to get you the best conversions for your courses or the most people resonating with your research.

So that’s the first thing to home in on: whatever you’re writing, but particularly if it’s for a student audience, give ‘we’ a wide berth (or use it sparingly).

Key takeaway:

Find yourself writing a line-starting-with-we?

Shift it around so you’re talking about your students/business partners/researchers (ie whoever you’re talking to) and what they care about instead.

Too much ‘we’ (when it comes to copy on your website, course descriptions or anywhere else that’s meant to incite emotion or action) is rarely a good move.

Because – lest we forget – our time-poor, information-overloaded readers don’t care that much about ‘we’ (ie. you). They care about themselves (and how your university can benefit them, and their lives and careers).

HE comms problem number 2: Stating the blimmin obvious

Remember those three sentences we looked at a minute or so ago?

In case you don’t, I mean these ones:

• We believe in creating a quality student experience
• We’re committed to innovation in everything we do
• We pride ourselves on our world leading research

They’re worth looking at a second time, I think.

Because they also highlight big problem number two that crops up all too often in university copy and content.

They’re too generic to spark the necessary emotion required to spur anyone, anywhere, into action.

After all, that’s what good copy and content is supposed to be doing, isn’t it: getting people to do something.

And in the case of universities, that ‘getting people to do something’ usually means ‘encouraging someone to sign up for a particular course’.

And that’s the problem with using generic phrases like the ones above.

Using that kind of bland language (or blanduage, as I like to call it) is highly unlikely to prompt someone to think ‘blimmin ell, that sounds like an university I absolutely need to hand over £9k+ a year to.’

Instead – more often than not – stumbling across this kind of generic copy on a course page or somewhere else on a university website will likely incite the following response in a prospective student’s mind:
 
“Isn’t that the very least I should expect from a reputable university?”

(That’s if it even registers at all.)

Sometimes things are so obvious, so much of a given, that they don’t need to be said.

So let’s not bother saying them.

Key takeaway:

Check your copy, by running it through your ‘is this the least someone would expect?’ filter? And if it is, cut it out.

Or dig into it to find your point of difference.

If you’re committed to excellent teaching, include examples of how you’ve inspired students and what they said about you.

If you put students at the heart of everything you do, include stories about your student support and what students had to say about it.

If you’ve created a ‘quality learning experience’, walk people through what that looks like.

But don’t just state the very least someone would expect. There’s really very little point.

HE comms problem number 3: Too much sector speak

Next problem to keep an eagle eye out for: veering into sector speak.

But before we dig into that, let’s revisit for a second what we’re trying to do with pretty much all the copy or content we’re putting out as HE communicators.

Create a connection.

We want people to relate to what we’re saying. We want them to ‘get it’. We want them to feel inspired and excited by our courses and research, and motivated to get involved in higher education and all it has to offer them.

And if we veer into using terms that only some of us understand, we’re basically putting a barrier in the way of any of that happening.

Interestingly, have a cursory skim of any university tone of voice guidelines and you’ll usually see ‘avoid sector speak’ front and centre of any advice.

But, in the day to day of getting comms out the door, some of that language still invariably finds it way into articles or course pages or social posts.

So, what’s happening?

Well, for a start, comms people may not be referring to the guidelines as often as they could or should (that’s a post for another time).

But there’s another issue at play here too, I think, that I’m going to snappily refer to as ‘becoming linguistically institutionalised’.

What I mean by that over-blown expression is that if a person writing a piece of comms is deeply entrenched in the sector – because perhaps they’ve been working in it a long time – they might start letting certain language creep into their comms, because those terms are so commonplace to them that they think other people use them widely, too. When often they might not.  

For example, you and your HE colleagues might say:
We offer extensive employability support

But a student probably thinks of it as:
We can help you with your CV, interview skills and finding relevant jobs

Or you and your team might refer to it as:
Excellent graduate outcomes

But a student would most likely think of it as:
Increasing your chances of getting a job afterwards

If we want to increase the likelihood of our copy resonating with the people we want to reach, we need to talk their language. Which means being vigilant at cutting out those over-used HE ways of talking about things that might not mean that much to someone outside the sector.

Key takeaway:

Become a sector speak vigilante (make a list of the most over-used HE phrases and expressions to avoid and keep them as a checklist for anyone writing comms for you to refer to).

And if you want to take things a step further, talk to students to find out how they describe the things you want to talk about and weave those words back into your comms.

Not only will that help you avoid the jargon everyone else in the sector uses (ie stand out), you’ll be talking to students in ‘their’ language. The language that’s much more likely to stick in their minds, and evoke the response you want.

HE comms problem number 4: Too much telling, not enough showing

The next problem we want to weed out, and do away with, is probably best illustrated by this oft-quoted piece of writing advice:

‘Show don’t tell’

It’s the subject of many a tips-based post on the socials.

And for good reason.

Because showing trumps telling almost every time.

Incidentally, ‘show me’ is also the phrase I probably mutter to myself in my head the most when I’m assessing client source material or interviewing a client to work out what to include in a particular university communication.

‘Show me’.

As in how can we provide evidence of what you’re saying so people can experience and feel it for themselves?

Eg:
We’re world leaders in small molecule research

Show me:
With a podcast that clearly positions you as an expert in the field

Eg:
We use ground-breaking teaching methods to create interactive learning experiences

Show me:
With a tutorial from your virtual open day, so I can experience your teaching first hand

Eg:
We place a big emphasis on our student experience

Show me:
With student stories that bring people’s individual experiences to life so I can visualise what’s it like to study with you myself

Showing is nearly always more powerful than simply telling.

Because showing invites you into an experience.
Because showing invites an emotive response.
And because showing invites our reader to come to their own conclusions.

And we all want to feel like we have ownership over the decisions we make.

Key takeaway:

Show me what you can do.
Show me what I can expect.
Show me why you’re the right uni for me.

Show me.

HE comms problem number 5: Not using stories

And finally, you’d have to be living on Pluto (or far, far away from LinkedIn anyway) to not have heard us comms and marketing folk bang on about the value of storytelling.

But, still, I see lots of universities not making the most of it, particularly on places like their course pages (which lend themselves brilliantly to student and alumni stories as forms of social proof).

Stories are good for many reasons:

They’re specific.
They’re an excellent way to show, rather than tell (see problem 4 for a reminder of why that’s a good idea).
They’re evidence.

But most importantly:

Us humans are wired to like them. We see ourselves in stories. We connect with them. We feel stuff when we read them. We’ve grown up with them. We remember them.

So, if you want to stand out in your marketing and content.
If you want to people to connect with what you’re saying more.
If you want your words to have more impact.

Don’t forget that stories are one of the most powerful ways you can do it.

Key takeaway:

Tell more stories.

And that’s a wrap on this beefier-than-usual post. But hopefully it’s a useful one. I wanted to cover off the five biggest problems I see in HE copy and content all the time, in one place, so you’ve got them to refer back to.

Quick summary for you:

1. Avoid too many sentences with ‘we’ in them
2. Don’t be too generic
3. Be vigilant at weeding out sector speak
4. Don’t tell people how great you are, show them
5. Tell more stories

Love to know how you get on with spotting those ‘mistakes’ and rectifying them in your copy and content.

Let me know how it’s going, or if you have any questions (on LinkedIn or by email). I’d be more than happy to answer them.